Want to learn how to run a full strategy workshop?
Most people have a hard time putting together and running a full strategy workshop that creates IMPACTFUL outcomes. There are so many things to consider.
Who do you invite? How do you prepare everyone beforehand? Who is going to lead it? What will our strategy exercises be? What is the agenda for the strategy workshop? How do we deal with so many different opinions? What are the outcomes we are looking for to get the strategy moving?
You want a strategy workshop to make the most out of people's time. You don’t want people walking away believing their time was wasted. Or even worse, that nothing was accomplished and there is another meeting needed.
Figuring all of this out can make you feel worried, insecure, and overwhelmed. Luckily there are several things you can do to have a successful strategy workshop.
I’ve had my fair share of strategy workshops that left me thinking, “Well now what”. As I searched throughout the years, I found a process that’s clear and ends with impactful outcomes.
We’ve been working with teams for over ten years, helping them put strategies into place for their organization. In this post, you will learn:
How to prepare for a strategy workshop
The agenda for the strategy workshop
Step by step strategy workshop exercises to get a clear strategy in place
The most important piece of a strategy workshop
So you can run a strategy workshop that gets everyone aligned, creates buy-in, and has clear action steps. Providing you and your team the best chance for success. Instead of coming up with an incomplete plan that leaves people feeling confused.
Strategy Workshop - How To Best Prepare
How To Prepare For A Strategy Workshop
First, we're going to talk about how you can best prepare for a strategy workshop, using the example of psychological safety. You may have a different topic for your strategy workshop agenda. For example marketing, hiring process, employee development.
Now let's dive into what you need to do beforehand so that you have a successful strategy workshop.
Know When To Run A Strategy Workshop
Generally strategy workshops are run when there are major challenges you and your team want to make progress on for an extended period of time.
So for example, your teams are having unproductive meetings. People are not challenging each other. There are major communication issues that prevent them from collaborating well.
You see that there's a problem or a challenge and you want to make forward progress.
Do Research Before The Workshop
Before the workshop, do as much research as you can about the issue. Come in with information to help everyone get on the same page. This helps people develop a shared understanding and language before they dive into the strategy workshop. You are priming them for what is about to come.
What Questions Are Answered During The Strategy Workshop?
Here is a list of questions that get answered during a strategy workshop.
What is the goal that we want to really focus on?
Where are we going as an organization?
What does success actually look like?
What's the big picture here?
How will we actually get there?
What are the things that we will actually be doing to get us towards that goal?
In what order will we actually be doing these things?
What are the big projects and initiatives that we want to run this year to get us towards the goal?
What are the things that are going to get us there?
These are some of the questions that get answered during a strategy workshop.
Objectives Of A Strategy Workshop
What are the objectives of the strategy workshop?
A clear vision of the future and an action plan to get there
The first thing you do is get a very clear vision of where you are going and how you will get there. You prioritize what to focus on and what not to focus on. What are we going to put off until later and what are we going to do right now?
The challenges that will prevent us from getting there
The strategy workshop exercises will help you dive into the core issues that are currently or could prevent your team from success.
For example, if you're having challenges with psychological safety, an issue might be a high turnover rate right. Or you see that people are staying quiet in meetings. Maybe, no one's really working with one another. Strategy workshops help you get clear and honest about those issues.
Alignment and buy-in with the team
A clear understanding of the issue can align and unite the team around that common enemy (the issue/challenge).
It's really easy for people to be misaligned, to not understand what's really going on. The energy gets scattered and slows down the progress. But having a strategy workshop agenda with specific exercises creates clarity on where we are going, how we're going to do that, and in what order we're going to do those things. Leading to one massive group of people going towards a goal.
Picking the Participants
Who's going to be at the workshops?
Think about who is going to provide the most value, who will execute the strategy, and who will be affected by it.
Some people to consider:
Board of directors
C-suite
Leaders in your organization
Key staff
External stakeholders
Being purposeful about picking the participants will make a big difference in your strategy workshop. For example, let’s say you and your team worked a long time developing the strategy. Then you present it to the decision maker and they say it’s a no go. If they were a part of the strategy workshop, it could have saved you, the team and the company a lot of time, energy and resources.
If the person making the decision can’t be there for the whole thing, see if you can get them there near the beginning. So they can sign off on the direction your team is moving towards. This will help dramatically reduce the chance of a no. Also if they do say no, you didn’t waste a lot of time, and you can quickly pivot.
Find A Facilitator To Run The Workshop
You want someone who is going to lead people through the process. If you don't have a facilitator it can be very messy and disorganized.
At Lead By Impact, that is a lot of what we do. We are the facilitators of the experience. The team has the knowledge, we help facilitate the process.
If you can't afford a facilitator, most likely the person who has the most responsibility or who's putting this together can be the facilitator. That might mean you!
A facilitator will help with:
Leading the process to get those objectives done
Communicate what participants are saying and what they aren't saying
Keep the workshop focused. (It's very easy to go down rabbit holes)
Keep the meeting on time
Ask the group relevant and unbiased questions
Keep the energy going
Make the event as valuable as possible
Keep the team accountable making
There's a lot of time and money spent on strategy workshops. There are a variety of people with very different opinions and goals coming together. They need to get the most out of the workshop.
Save Time Before The Workshop
There are a few things you can do beforehand to steam-line the actual workshop.
Pre-meeting surveys
Create surveys to understand what people want to talk about. Learn what's on their minds, their worries, their hopes, their goals, and what they see as the main issue.
Collect as much information as you can beforehand. Share the results at the beginning of the strategy workshop to get everyone on the same page.
Research
Get as much information about what you're strategizing on. Is there any data to share, trends to report, or stories to share that will help people better understand what will be discussed? Collect all the different bits of information and put them together in a report.
You now have something people can look over. To help them feel prepared and be on the same page as everyone else. When the meeting starts, you can hit the ground running with more speed, clarity, and purposefulness.
Continue to look for other things you can do before the workshop to help save time and energy.
Now let's talk about what you can do during the workshop to make it as successful as possible.
Strategy Workshop - How To Run One
How To Run A Lean Strategy Workshop
Now we are going to focus on how to run a lean strategy workshop. A powerful process that you and your team could go through to get a clear strategy in place.
Exercise 1 - Long Term Goal
The first thing you're going to do is develop the long term goal. This gets everyone going in the same direction. It's also helpful as an anchor when you're working on something that feels really big or vague.
The long term goal gives the team a clear agreed upon “north star” to work toward. North star is just something you can look at and say okay that's where we're going.
It's also a great tool to use when you want to refocus people in the strategy workshop. Getting lost in conversation is common. People don't have a really clear sense of what's going on. But having the long term goal is something you can use to get the team to refocus.
At the end of the exercise you will have a one page summary of the project goals and key metrics. Looking at your ideal state, two years from now, maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe five years. We found two years feels a bit more realistic and it also feels like a stretch.
When you create this goal it might feel too optimistic. And that's why later we will put in metrics to keep it grounded.
Step 1 - Create The Potential Long Term Goals
To get it started each member will create multiple two-year goal statements.
Feel free to be open and push the edges of what could be a two year goal. In this first part you’re not choosing or deciding. You are seeing what might be possible and what the team as a whole is thinking.
For example a goal may be, in two years time everyone in our team feels good about working with one another. Again it sounds a little vague but it also has some sense of direction.
Step 2 - Visualize Everyones Goals
Each participant chooses one of their goals and puts them up. If you're in a virtual space you put it on a digital whiteboard. If you're in person, you put them on the wall or a whiteboard. You want to get everyone to see the different goals to choose from.
Instead of everyone talking, going down different rabbit holes, it's much easier and productive to visualize the goals. Everyone can look at the goals and understand them.
This is also a much more inclusive experience. It allows all the ideas to be “heard”. People feel more comfortable sharing more honestly what they think we could do. When an idea is associated with the person they might be worried about feeling judged, which may prevent them from being fully honest with their thoughts.
Once everyone wrote down their goals, put them up at the same time. It makes it much harder to know who wrote what. Now all the goals are up and you are focusing on the goals, not necessarily the people who created them.
Step 3 - Vote On The Best Goal
The team will vote on the goal they want to move forward with. Voting doesn’t put anyones idea down. It just gives the team a direction of where they will be going with this strategy.
Give the participants about five to ten minutes and have them silently decide which one they would choose.
Then each person will write down on a sticky note, which ones they want and why.
After the time is up, everyone will get a sticker with their initials on it. Then, at the exact same time, everyone will place the sticker on the goal they think is best. That prevents people from influencing each other. This just helps you understand where the team is at and what they want to focus on.
Step 4 - Share Your Why For The Goal You Chose
Each participant will share why they choose that specific goal. Keep it simple, just read from the sticky note that you wrote on earlier. You don't have to get lost in your conversation, you don't have to worry about making it perfect, just read what you wrote. You can add more or less from what you wrote down. You want to prevent people from going down long rabbit holes.
Step 5 - The Final Decision
You got to hear from the entire team. This allowed all voices to be heard and included. The final decision goes to the person with the most responsibility of moving the project forward. At the end of the day they have the responsibility and it's up to them to make sure all of this happens. This person gets to choose which one goal the team will move forward with.
Now you have a clear two year goal.
As Measured By (Metrics) Exercise Broken Down
It’s important to have metrics to let the team know that they are moving towards the goal.
Step 1 - Create The Potential “As Measured By Statements”
Each participant is going to create as many “as measured by” statements as possible. The goal here is to get as many statements as possible. An example of a metric might be, “As measured by a 70% reduction in turnover”. That might be an example of how you know you're moving in the right direction.
Step 2 - Visualize Everyones Metrics
Just like before you'll have a bunch of metric statements. At the end, each person puts up three metric statements.
Step 3 - Vote On The Best Metrics
Everyone will get three voting dots. You vote on the metric that measures whether or not you’re actually on track for the strategy. Then the person who is most responsible will also choose one of those metrics.
You will use the top three voted metrics. Sometimes two will be from the group and then one from the person most responsible. Sometimes the person most responsible will choose one of the three that are already top voted.
A Completed Example
At the end of the long term goal exercise you will have something like this.
“In two years time everyone on our team feels good about working with one another”
As measured by:
A 70% reduction in turnover
Everyone can share how they disagree with ideas
A 90% employee satisfaction rate
Now you know where you are going and how to know you are on the right track. Having this in place will make the rest of the strategy workshop a lot more focused.
Exercise 2 - Project Creation
Now that you know the goal, it’s time to develop the projects that will get the team towards the goal. It’s often helpful to look at these projects as experiments. These projects are going to be the team's best guesses.
If you're working on a psychological safety strategy workshop, the question is what are the experiments the team will run so everyone on our team feels good about working with one another?
Step - 1 Create The Potential Projects
Each person will think about what project can be done to positively impact the metrics and move the team towards the goal. Start by giving the project a fun name and then a minor description.
Next you'll create the steps that would be needed to complete the project. Start with the first step first, do the last step second and then fill in the rest. We found that process to be helpful in identifying all the tasks needed for the project.
Fill in the top 6-8 steps needed to complete the project. We will dive into the specific tasks later.
Each person can make 2-3 projects.
Step 2 - Visualize The Projects
The team will put up the projects for everyone to see. This helps the team get a clear understanding of each project, instead of trying to keep all the projects in your head.
Step 3 - Vote On The Best Projects
Then everyone will look at the projects and vote on the one that will bring you closest to your goals and move your metrics. Each person will get three dots to vote with. It's helpful to have that goal and metrics right. It helps make sure the projects you're voting for are going to get the team to that goal.
Then each person will write their initials on a single sticker and pick one project that they really like. The project you feel will move the team closest to the goal.
At the end the person with the most amount of responsibility we'll choose the final three to four projects.
Step 4 - Put The Projects On A Timeline
This is to know when the projects will be worked on. You will place them on the timeline. If the goal is to be met in the next two years, the first project may be done over the first three months. The second project will start after the first project and be done six months from then.
The Outcomes Of The Strategy Workshop Exercises
Now you and your team have:
A two year goal
Metrics to know you’re on the right track
Projects to get you towards the goal
Timeline of when the projects will be worked on
Now you have a clear path of developing psychological safety in the workplace or whatever strategy you're working on.
Strategy Workshop - Follow Through
The Most Important Part Of A Strategy Workshop
So what is the most important part of a strategy workshop?
Follow through!
It happens time and time again. People make plans, spend a lot of time, energy, and effort into making the plans and then they stop right there. They say knowledge is power and I don't agree. I don't believe it's knowledge that is power, it's the application of the knowledge that is the true power.
We will talk about how to set your team up so follow through occurs.
You will answer these questions in the next part of the lean strategy workshop.
What are the steps involved?
Who should do what?
What are the exact steps we need to do to make this project happen?
What do we need to do now?
What are the deadlines?
This is about getting very clear, very specific so that there are no questions.
What can happen after a strategy workshop is the thoughts of, “Okay now what? Who does what? What am I doing? When are we doing this?
You will have things so clear that people just need to step forward and get it done. And we will get it done with the task flow exercise.
Take Flow Exercise
The goal’s are to understand what are all the steps involved in each project, who is doing what task, and by when. If you have a two-year strategy, there will be multiple projects to get you towards that goal.
After the workshop is over, everyone knows exactly what to do and there is no ambiguity. This is where you go from strategy to tactics.
Step 1 - Create Tasks For A Specific Project
It’s really simple, first identify which project you want to work on. Then ask everyone to write down every single thing involved in making it actually happen. Each single step will be on a single sticky note. You can write as many of them as you need. The nice thing about the sticky notes is you can move them around and re-order them.
Write down the first task first and then the final task second. This gives you a container and makes it easier to know where the start and stop points are. Then you fill out the rest of the tasks.
As they are filled out, you put them in a horizontal line between the first and last task. One project may have five tasks or it may have 50 or more.
Your project may be more complex, or it may be simpler.
Step 2 - Visualize The Task Flow
Then each person will put up their task flow. You will have row after row of tasks flows. This allows people to see what was created.
Step 3 - Vote On The Best Task Flow
Now each person gets one vote to decide which task flow is the most encompassing that will get the project done.
Then the person most responsible for the project decides which task flow is the most comprehensive. They can take tasks from other flows and put it into the main one. This helps make sure you have a clear sense of all the things that need to be done.
Step 4 - Create The Task Flow Timeline
You will figure out when these things will happen. As a team fill in the start date first for the first task. Fill in the final date for the last task. Then fill in the rest of the dates for all the other tasks in between.
Now you have a good sense of when these things need to be done.
Step 5 - Assign Tasks
This is when you know who is doing which task. First you ask people to assign themselves to the task they can do or want to do. They put their name on the task.
After that you'll probably have some tasks that don't have any names. The person most responsible will assign those tasks.
Step 6 - Input The Project Into A Project Management Tool
You put the project with all of its tasks, dates and assigned people into a management tool. A lot of organizations use tools like Asana or Trello.
Here is an example of what it could look like:
Strategy Workshop - Task Flow
You have all the tasks. On the bottom are the initials of the people who are going to do those specific tasks. On top are the due dates of when it's going to be done.
Now everything is very clear. Everyone is in consensus, everybody knows what is being done, who's doing what, when all of it will be done by. There is no ambiguity.
Then you do this for each project. At the end you have a strategy with clear actions that will lead you to your goal.
Conclusion
At the end of the workshop everything is very clear. Everyone is in consensus of where you are going and how to measure success. There are projects where everybody knows what is being done, who's doing what, when all of it will be done by. There is no ambiguity.
You now have become the person who can lead a team through a strategy workshop. Instead of being overwhelmed and worried about wasting everyones time.
Now your team is on a path to success, instead of being left in the dark.
If you're interested to learn more about how to get people to work in a collaborative way, we have a free guide for you. It’s a deep dive to understand how to bring teams together in any kind of environment.